Sunday, February 8, 2015

I'm Engaged

Sup,

Saturday
morning we were sitting there doing our studies and we hear the
fire alarm go off in the halls. It went off for a couple minutes before
we decided to do something about it. We called the Portuguese Elders
that live on the floor below us and they said that they had evacuated.
We decided we probably better evacuate too. We grabbed our stuff,
some grabbed journals, others grabbed pics of girls back home, I
snatched a couple of those classic caramel apple suckers off of my desk
and we called it Gucci. The lights were flashing in the hallway as
the beeping of the fire alarm deafened our ears. The elevators weren't
working so we did the first thing that we could think of… We ran
down twenty six floors worth of stairs. We got outside of our building
to see it surrounded by 6 fire trucks, but no fire in sight. Turns
out there was no fire and the alarms malfunctioned. We were out of
breath and had sore legs for nothing but at least we got a picture haha.
Pics or it didn't happen!

We survived the fire of 2015!

My
companion from highland and I parted ways for the day so that I could
go on a split with my Zone Leader, also from highland, Elder Christensen.
I love splits when you already know the person well. Elder
Christensen and I served together the whole time I was in the Bronx
and now we room together in New Roc. It was a busy day because we
had to deliver all the mail to the city. We deliver the mail to the city
every Tuesday but since #StormJuno was last Tuesday we weren't able
to go out, so all the mail accumulated.

Split with Elder Christensen - Word to your mother

When we started deliveries
our sleek minivan, with all the seats taken out was filled to
the very brim. The city was madness because it was the city of course.
It was my first time driving through the city without my trustee
guide, Elder Moss. It is so hard to be a good representative of
Jesus Christ when you are trying to maneuver through NY city traffic,
your patience gets zapped. I never considered myself to have road
rage but when everybody is honkin' for no fetching reason I become.....
A.. A.. A monster. Other than almost getting side swiped by
some taxis it ended up being a great time. All that time in the van gave
Elder Christensen some good talking time, I was able to learn a lot
about him. There is a lot that can be learned from hearing part of someone's
life story. There is great things to be learned from people's
pasts. Just think about the scriptures and how we learn about other
people's pasts. I will let that one bake your noodle!

Elder
Moss and I were wandering around the streets of New Roc last P-Day
and we came across a ghetto old fashioned suit store. Inside we found
some gorgeous ties. The ties had Bulldogs on em and were some of the
fattest ties I have ever seen. We decided to purchase the ties for 10
bucks and have companionship ties (a common tradition in our mission).
But since this is New York and we are a couple of classy young
chaps we couldn't be walking around with fatty ties. Nobody would
respect us! So we decided to skinny the ties by ourselves. It took
an hour or two but we unstitched the ties, cut off excess material,
sewed those puppies back up half the width that they were and
wore them to Mission Leadership Council.

Comp Unity Ties with Elder Moss - Also word to your mother

Speaking
of Mission Leadership Council, it was amazing! President Morgan
is such a stud. Every time he talks I feel like he tears the roof
off of the room and let's the inspiration from the heavens come rushing
into my soul. This MLC was a little different than the other ones
I have attended. This time we had an egg drop activity. We broke off
into groups and had to make something out of 50 straws and a roll of
tape that could catch an egg dropping from 10 ft high. We had 15 minutes
to complete the task. For 15 minutes we along with the Zone Leaders
and Sister Training Leaders created something that could catch the
egg. Ours ended up catching the egg and it was unharmed. It was a fun
activity but there was a point to be made, we didn't just drop eggs
cuz it's fun.

President Morgan at the end of the activity asked if
anybody had thoughts of home, or if anybody was jealous about the vacation
their family was going on, or if anybody was thinking about the
fun stuff they were going to do when they completed their mission. For
these 15 minutes everybody was engaged in this activity and thought
nothing of other things. For the short two years I am serving the
Lord I need to be focused on the mission. It's easy to get distracted
of what your purpose is as a missionary and honestly, I needed
to hear that. President Morgan always says, "One foot in, one foot
out, leaves the heart and mind with doubt." That applies to any task
in our life. If we are anxiously engaged in something we will be able
to see miracles.